At this moment,
Company of Heroes 2 is my most eagerly-awaited game of 2013. Here's the first teaser trailer, which shows very little in the way of gameplay but does impress with its depiction of the Eastern Front of WW2 being considerably vaster than the western in scale, casualties and strategic importance.
If this had come out say 5-6 years ago, people would have dismissed it as being another generic WW2 shooter. But now that pretty much EVERY fps is set in the modern day or near future, It's probably not surprising that the pendulum maybe swaying a little towards period shooters.
ReplyDeleteBut still, WW2. Why not use other historical back drops like Vietnam or the Persian gulf war. Or hell, the Mexican drug war if you had to do something in the modern day.
The COMPANY OF HEROES titles are strategy games, not shooters. The first one also came out in late 2006, so 5-6 years ago :-)
ReplyDeleteThe MEN OF WAR series (a more hardcore RTS than COMPANY OF HEROES) has moved to other time periods, including Vietnam. Apparently Relic have said they could also take CoH to other settings and time periods in the future.
It would be interesting to see more popular games (strategy and shooters) set in more unusual settings. There was a pretty rapid evolution of warfare in the two centuries before WWII, so quite varied products could result.
ReplyDeleteSuggestions:
- WWI, outside the Western Front (which would be sort of dull) - Russia, Italy/Austria, Turkey. Or the Russian-Japanese War.
- The Boer War.
- The Crimean War
- The Scramble for Africa
- The West African Jihads
- The Spanish American Wars of Independence
- The Taiping Rebellion
- The Caucasian Wars
- The War of the Triple Alliance
Those would all offer distinctive scenarios, I think.